Here To Stay

by Mark Edwards

deciding not to mention that I thought she might have been smoking.

‘I mean, they paid for this trip.’ Her laugh was bitter. ‘Yeah. They paid.’ ‘What do you mean by that?’ ‘They used money I lent them.’ I stared at her. ‘You’re kidding?’

oop

I was shocked. More than that: angry. ‘How much money?’ ‘Let’s just say it wiped out my savings account. But apparently I’ll get it back soon.’

girl what???

‘Oh, Gemma, you should have told me.’

‘Wait. If they don’t have any money, how are they going to pay for a deposit on a house?’ She gave me a look, like now you get it.

smh

‘You’ve had a hint of what they’re really like. But that’s all it is. A hint. You don’t know the things they’ve done. The stuff they did when I was a kid. If you talked to people back home . . .’

???

‘Come on, Gemma, tell me.’ ‘No. I can’t.’

shouldve never said anything

wondering how the hell the day had fallen apart so quickly. But I knew who was to blame. Jeff and Lizzy.

According to my satnav, Winchelsea Beach, the seaside village where Gemma had grown up, was just over forty miles away. An hour and a half’s drive, though I reckoned I could do it quicker if the roads were clear and I put my foot down.

oh lord

What exactly was I going to do here today? I didn’t even know the Robinsons’ old address. But I had driven here thinking there must be someone around here who remembered them. Someone who might be able to tell me something. And where do most people in small communities hang out and trade gossip? The pub.

bye this is so sneaky i love it

I needed to find some people who looked like they’d lived here for a long time, though I knew I couldn’t just walk up to them and ask if they knew Jeff and Lizzy. It would be better if I sat down, had some lunch and then tried to start a conversation.

wishing I’d brought a newspaper with me. Instead, I did what everyone does these days when they’re alone or in company: I got out my phone and stared at the screen,

bye thats so real

Hope you’re OK. I hate arguing with you. I went for quite a long drive and am just having lunch. Love you xxx

I kept racking my brains for something to say to them, something engaging that would start a conversation.

The other man, who also sported a beard, this one ginger, nodded at me like he was entertaining an idiot.

I pressed on. ‘Yeah, it was a friend who used to live around here, once upon a time. Jeff Robinson, his name is.’ The men exchanged a look. White Beard snorted. ‘You don’t want to listen to anything Jeff Robinson says.’ Bingo.

BINGO INDEEDD !

And they were both, I realised, quite drunk. That was good. It made them more likely to be indiscreet.

As soon as I said it I realised it was a bad move. Dennis had his pint of bitter halfway to his lips but he froze before smacking it back on to the table.

I either needed to come clean and admit Jeff and Lizzy were my parents-in-law, or go along with their idea that I was with the police. I made a quick decision: I’d let them believe what they wanted to believe.

‘I sold him a car. Paid me half up front and then buggered off without coughing up the rest.’ I really had hit pay dirt here. ‘Sounds like him.’

real.

‘Constant noise. Complaining about every little thing she did. She had this cat that she doted on but they were always complaining about it crapping in their garden. Then one day it turned up dead – the vet said it had eaten rat poison.’ He gave me a meaningful look. ‘Of course, they couldn’t prove the Robinsons had given it to the cat but Janet knew.’

bye i straight thought of elliot's cat

They were always yelling at those kids. Yelling at each other too. Sometimes, she said, she’d hear sobbing in the middle of the night. Screaming too. A child, screaming its head off.’

Perhaps Jeff owed him money too.

According to Janet, they had bruises all over them. Bites too.’

time. I thought about Chloe too, still attached to her parents like a child who hadn’t been allowed to grow up.

‘I don’t blame their daughter for running off with those hippies.’ ‘They weren’t hippies,’ Dennis said, with a roll of his eyes. ‘They were born-agains.’ ‘Seemed liked hippies to me.’

‘When the caravan’s rocking, don’t come knocking,’ said Dennis.

But I could imagine how a young black man who lived in a caravan with two white women must have stood out around here.

whatchamacallit.

‘I hope you get them, whatever it is they’ve done now. And I hope they both go down for a long time.’

I had no idea how Gemma would react if I told her I’d been talking to strangers about her.

Another question: why had Gemma invited Jeff and Lizzy to stay with us if they had treated her terribly in the past?

More than ever, I wanted Jeff and Lizzy out of my house, for Gemma’s sake as much as mine. The sight of her slumped against the car door reminded me of how much she’d been drinking since they arrived, how different she was when they were around. And how urgent it was to get them to move out.

If the whole thing isn’t a lie, that is.’

‘I’m going to tell them I want them to move out,’ I said. ‘It’s time we gave them a deadline. One week today. I think that’s fair.’

‘We need to be united on this, Gemma. Ideally, you should tell them as they’re your parents.’

With everything I thought I now knew about Jeff and Lizzy, I wasn’t too upset by the idea of them being homeless.

Maybe they’ll surprise us and tell us the money’s come through and they’ve already found somewhere. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?’ ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘So would world peace.’

real.

The kitchen was in total disarray. Dirty dishes and mugs were stacked up in the sink and there were three plates on the table containing what looked like the remnants of a full English breakfast. There was a puddle of milk on the floor by the sink. There was cereal all over the counter and a pile of what looked like cat vomit by the back door. Worse than this, there was an odd gassy smell and, if I concentrated, I could hear hissing.

holy shit

‘They left the gas on,’ I said, opening the window. ‘What are they playing at? And look at the state of this place.’

I went into the living room. A pizza box on the coffee table. An unpleasant smell, like stale cigarette smoke. That was when I noticed the burn hole on the sofa and the stain on the rug. I got down on all fours and took a sniff. Red wine.

omg id be livid.

‘No. Please,’ I whispered. I ran back to the kitchen, praying I wasn’t correct, that the spilled red wine was just a cheap bottle from the supermarket. I rushed over to the wine rack. ‘It’s gone,’ I said to Gemma. ‘What?’ ‘My bottle of Cappellano. The one my professor gave to me when I graduated.’

oh shit

‘No. It’s not. It wasn’t just a bottle of wine. It was a gift, a special gift. I was saving it.’

I was sweating, and as I passed a radiator I touched it. Red-hot. They must have cranked the thermostat up and left it when they went out. More expense. Then I remembered the puddle of cat sick by the back door and went to take a closer look. What had made him throw up? The gas? With a lurch of horror, I remembered what the two anglers had told me about the Robinsons’ old neighbour’s cat dying from rat poison.

A missing – no, stolen – bottle of wine was nothing compared to my cat. If Jeff or Lizzy had done something to him . . .

I found Gemma in our bedroom, unpacking.

i give you the greenlight to air her out.

I stopped. There was something strange about the room. It took me a moment to realise what it was. The bed. It was different. The headboard, which had been white, was grey. Instead of a divan base, the bed now had black iron legs. I couldn’t believe it. Jeff and Lizzy had replaced the bed, which I’d bought when I moved in here, with a new one. And, staring at it, I realised I recognised this bed from the Ikea catalogue that had been hanging around the house; the catalogue that Jeff and Lizzy had been through, circling items.

I TOLD YOU.

Jeff and Lizzy exchanged an amused look. ‘Sorry, Dad,’ said Jeff. ‘We went for a walk. Did we break our curfew?’ Lizzy laughed.

lol

dressed, thankfully.

Jeff and Lizzy looked up at me from below. Gemma and Chloe were above. It felt like all of them, even Gemma, had me surrounded, trapped in my own territory.